Naomi Lakritz: Let’s not become petty about seniors’ discounts

CALGARY — The other day in a nursing home in Osaka, Japan, the world’s oldest person, Misao Okawa, celebrated her 117th birthday. She was feted with a cake, she commented that the intervening years between 1898 and now seemed pretty short, and she had to suffer the usual inane question from reporters: What’s your secret to longevity — as if she’s holding back some key information so she can gloat when others succumb earlier.

To her everlasting credit, Okawa did not reply with the usual cliché about taking a nip of brandy every morning or performing some other talismanic ritual to ward off death. Instead, she said: “I wonder about that, too.”

So on the one hand, we marvel at people like Okawa and make a big fuss about her truly senior status. On the other hand, we look for ways to kick seniors to the curb. The Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy has just come out with a report recommending that municipal governments abolish seniors’ discounts.

Kitchen says the majority of seniors don’t need these price reductions. That may be true, but there’s an argument to be made that seniors deserve them. Not everything is, or should be, about money. Are we so stingy that we can’t show our elders some respect by offering them discounts on things after all their years of working hard, paying taxes and being contributing, productive citizens? They shouldn’t have to wait until the next world to get their rewards; they deserve some rewards in this one.

Kitchen, a professor emeritus at Trent University, told the CBC: “A lot of these discounts and special programs were introduced back in the 1960s, 1970s, when a vast percentage of the seniors were poor. Forward that through to 2008 [to] 2010, the percentage of poor in the seniors groups is smaller than any other age group in the country.”

He’s concerned that younger people who may be poorer are subsidizing affluent seniors. Well, those younger people will be seniors one day themselves, and then they can enjoy their well-earned discounts.

Nor were seniors’ discounts responsible for the economic downfall of Detroit; cities can well afford these perks. Besides, lower-income people already pay less taxes because they live in neighbourhoods where the market value of their homes is lower than in more affluent neighbourhoods.

Kitchen’s rebuttal to the idea that seniors merit discounts is that city taxes and fees in any given year provide services to people in that year, and it’s not fair to “ask someone else to pay for a service that you’re currently using.” One could argue then that school taxes should be shouldered only by parents of school-age children. Why should seniors be asked to pay for a service that someone else — parents — is currently using?

I’ll tell you why seniors deserve discounts, and why we shouldn’t be so petty as to take them away. It’s because these discounts are the least we can do to say thank you to a generation who survived the Depression, who came back from a war they didn’t complain about going to fight, and who weren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work. They were good, solid citizens who raised their children to be the same, and they contributed to their neighbourhoods, their schools and their communities.

So a senior who now has the time to visit a city-run fitness centre and take an aquacize class doesn’t pay full price for it. So what? Long may he or she enjoy that class. I think it’s the height of small-mindedness and disrespect for the elderly to begrudge them that.

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